Borahshadow's 97 K1500 ECSB build thread.

[borahshadow]

Several months went by and I didn't really do much to the truck except drive it and put gas in it lol. This is about August of 2011.

The next thing I did was find a reel light and underhood storage box at the local junk yard.

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[borahshadow]

I had some pulsation when braking so that meant it was time for new rotors. Turns out it's cheaper to buy new re-manufactured rotors than it is to get the rotors turned so I got some new re-manufactured ones.

Old and new

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[borahshadow]

My wiper arms and tow (recovery) hooks were experiencing the same thing that my hitch receiver was, 14 years in the weather was starting to take a tole on the paint.

I took them off, wire brushed them and then hit them with some steel wool. I washed them with some dish soap and then gas to make sure they were oil free. Then I painted them up with the same satin black I've used on the other stuff.

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I took the paint completely off the wiper arms partly because it came easily and partly so I didn't have ridges where it transitioned from no paint to factory paint (probably powder coat.)

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For some reason I don't have any finished close up pictures of the tow hooks. Just know that they look better just like the hitch receiver did. I know that my rattle can paint job will tend to chip off easily on the tow hooks as soon as they are hit with a rock (which has already happened) or as soon as someone uses a chain or something metal to pull me out of something but they are still an improvement and when they start to get bad again I will just paint them again.

 

[borahshadow]

Next is one of the mods that I've done that has had the most profound impact on the exterior appearance of my truck... GMT-800 style tow mirrors!

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I debated about these for a long time because I wasn't sure how they'd look with my truck at stock height and being "non-beef" and all. I finally decided that while they might not "complete the look" of my truck they wouldn't look bad and with that decision made I bought them. My main purpose in purchasing them was for their function and their form was secondary. I have already put them to good use. Literally the day after I installed them I took the horse trailer about 5 hours round trip. A week or two later I towed my parents 29' RV almost 1500 miles with them. With the horse trailer they are nice but I can get by without them. With the 29' RV some sort of towing mirror is almost mandatory. Since the CIPA mirrors that slide over the 95+ mirrors on these truck cost about $80 I decided that the extra $120 wasn't that much to get the permanent and nicer towing mirrors. I love having the convex bottom mirror to help me see my blind spot when just driving around town too. These stick out farther than the stock mirrors which improves my trailer vision even with small trailers when I don't need to extend them.

Before (These are from when I had a photoshoot after my new corners)

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After:

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[borahshadow]

No pictures on this one.

After driving 1500 miles with a trailer (aka hard work) I could tell that something was wrong. I would get random misfires if I let it run above 4k for longer than maybe 5 seconds. This made climbing some mountain grades difficult as I had to keep it at 3k maybe 3.5k max or else I'd get a random misfire. Got home from the trip looked at the service log and wouldn't you know that it had been about 45k since the last tune up. Yep that explains everything.

I got new plugs, wires, cap, and PCV valve. The machine runs great again! I can rev it up well past 4k if I want to and it doesn't complain at all. I haven't had any reason to hold it above 4k for longer than just an acceleration sprint but it runs great. I was talked into the Iridium plugs even though I've read lots of people say to just run the coppers here on the forum and elsewhere. The Iridium plugs seem to work fantastic and I don't have any problem with them at all. If they really will go 50-100K they will probably be the last set of plugs this engine sees. At least before a rebuild but I'm not planning on rebuilding my 350 when it retires

 

[borahshadow]

I've been wanting to do this one for a long time...
I picked up a Mothers Powerball Mini and some Mothers Mag and Aluminum Polish.


I washed them off good with the pressure washer then dried them off.

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Then I went to work with the Powerball on my cordless drill. I had to use a small polishing cone on my Dremel for the area around the valve stem.

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I discovered that while there wasn't a spec of clear coat on the outside of the wheels there was clear coat on the inside of the little holes and also on the backside of the wheel. The clear was all faded and missing in places. Where it was missing it was starting to get pitted too. I obviously couldn't just polish the inside of the holes with sections of clear coat and sections of pitted aluminum there. I ended up taking a sanding drum on my Dremel and cleaning them out. I didn't have the patience nor did I want to spend the money to keep working up the grit so I just worked up to about 220. Yes it left scratches that didn't polish out but they aren't really noticeable unless you get up close and look for them. Even with the scratches on the inside of the holes the inside of the holes looks lots better. The wheels were in such poor shape that they aren't a perfect finish anywhere for that matter so I considered it a big improvement and maybe down the road I'll work on them and get them perfect.

After:

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Between less than ideal weather and other things I haven't had the time to go take a photo shoot of the truck cleaned up and waxed with the new wheels but they look 200X better I think!
All my friends think it's a big improvement. I hadn't mentioned to one of my friends that I had polished them and the first time he saw my truck after I did he said "Holy Shiny!" lol

 

[borahshadow]

I wetsanded and Polished my 3rd brake light. It restored it's appearance and hopefully improved it's effectiveness too (both as a cargo lamp and 3rd brake light.)

I wetsanded it with 600 Grit. I polished it with Meguires PlastiX Plastic cleaner and polish. It was on sale so I used it. It seems to work good but it's not a very aggressive polish. I used my Powerball Mini with the PlastiX polish. I couldn't have done much of any polishing with it by hand because it's pretty mild.

Before

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Masked off

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Sanded smooth. Notice that it's not yellow anymore but it's cloudy from the sanding.

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Polished

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[borahshadow]

I've wanted a temperature and Compass mirror for a long time. I still think that if I would have had one back in January I may have noticed that it was down to freezing temperature and clued me into the fact that the roads may have black ice. I'm not saying that it would have or will make up for poor judgement but it certainly can't hurt to have a better idea of the real temperature outside.

Anyway I finally got the chance to go to the yard and get one. I did a write up of the installation in this thread. I'll just post a few pictures of the install here.

Temp sender on my DIY bracket since I didn't pull the bracket from the donor vehicle:

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I put a weather pack connector in the engine bay to make it easy if the engine wiring harness ever needs removed or for other reasons.

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I used one of my extra fuse box pins and I wired in a fuse where the rear wiper would be on an SUV. Yes the mirror has it's own fuse. I know that there is enough head room on that circuit that I feel I can tap into it if I need a source of switched power in the future.

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I prewired in the pig tail for a lighted sun visor so if(when) I put on in in the future it would save me work. It didn't end up saving me as much work as I hoped but nonetheless it's there all ready

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The mirror

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All finished up (it's a little dirty though)

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I love having the temp and compass and the auto dimming is way nicer than I expected. I never used to dim my manual mirror but now I don't know how I lived without the auto dimming or at least dimming the manual. Now I wish there were auto dimming tow mirrors... I wonder if I could get dimming,heated, and signal glass from one of the gmt-800 or gmt-900 trucks and put it in these mirrors... Probably way more money than it's worth assuming it would even work. Actually I don't know if there are even any OEM dimming tow mirrors but I'd think there's gotta be... I digress.

 

[borahshadow]

I decided to wetsand and polish my tail lights too. I already had the sand paper and polish so I figure it didn't cost me more than a couple of bucks and a few hours of my time. I want to get some stock looking LED tails but I decided to spend the money on my next couple of mods and just polish these for now. It's an improvement but not as much as I'd like. Unlike the 3rd brake light I can still see more scratches than I'd like. If I had it to do over I'd have used probably 1500 grit either as a first step or used the 600 and then the 1500. The PlastiX polish just wasn't able to get all the scratching out even with the power ball. Remember how I said it's pretty mild?

Before:

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Notice the wax that would build up in the lettering and was really difficult to get out and was hard to avoid getting there? yep not a problem any more.

During:

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After:

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[borahshadow]

Everything from polishing the wheels up to this post were all mods that I did during the month of October 2011.

I scored an Escalade cluster out at the junk yard the other day! I also had ordered some Cool white LEDs a couple of days ahead of time in anticipation of getting the cluster from the yard. Luckily they showed up the same day that I went and got the Esky cluster!

The cluster was dirty and had some somewhat minor scratching on the clear face. I cleaned it up and then I went to work with the PlastiX polish and powerball. I didn't do any wetsanding. I was trying to get the scratches out not add more. There wasn't any yellowing that needed to be sanded off so it would have been somewhat pointless to wetsand it.


Here's my old cluster in the truck:

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Side by side comparison:

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The Escalade cluster has a blue film that with white LEDs will make the gauges show up blue while the needles show up white. That's one of the main reasons that I wanted it. The other reasons are the white needles, just to be different, and because it goes up to 120 which puts interstate speeds close to straight up. Just like with the oil pressure, battery, and coolant temp gauges I can now see if I'm where I need to be just by seeing if the needles are pointing straight up. It's not something many people consciously think about but many instrument panels are designed that way.

With the stock incandescent bulbs it appears somewhat turquoise and it has orange needles when lit up. It must have a faint orange filter on the needles because the light from the bulbs ins't quite that orange. Luckily the white LEDs show up exactly like that, white.

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I followed the guide here on the forums to swap my odometer:

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I cleaned up the face of the gauges too as they were dusty from sitting in a junk yard for so long and then gave them a little plastic protector that I use on my dash and interior plastics.

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There it is!

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I also put cool white LEDs in my HVAC. Luckily they show up blue too but not quite as dark of a blue as the Esky cluster. It's close enough though and gives a good interior match to everything (My Eclipse 5030 has red or blue illumination and I've always used the blue. After all my truck is blue inside and out.)

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For the record I used the WLED-x-x from superbrightleds.com I used the 120 degree. They are the perfect brightness for me. Some people on this forum have been using the 5 led version or the high powered 5led version and I personally think that it's pointless at best, too bright at worst. I also used the regular strength T1.5 bulbs for the HVAC.